Saturday, January 20, 2007

Google's big bandwidth acquisitions

Google controls more network fiber than any other organization. This is not to say that Google OWNS all that fiber, just that they control it through agreements with network operators.

Google is building a LOT of data centers. The company appears to be as attracted to cheap and reliable electric power as it is to population proximity.

Of course this doesn't answer the question why Google needs so much capacity in the first place, but I have a theory on that.

Robert concludes that Google is trying to corner the market on bandwidth:

It is becoming very obvious what will happen over the next two to three years. More and more of us will be downloading movies and television shows over the net and with that our usage patterns will change.

Instead of using 1-3 gigabytes per month ... we'll go to 1-3 gigabytes per DAY ... a huge backbone burden on ISPs. Those ISPs will be faced with the option of increasing their backbone connections by 30X, which would kill all profits, OR they could accept a peering arrangement with the local Google data center.

[Google] is inspired by the idea of "a world with infinite storage, bandwidth, and CPU power."

They say that "the experience should really be instantaneous". They say that they should be able to "house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc)" which leads to a world where "the online copy of your data will become your Golden Copy and your local-machine copy serves more like a cache"

Maybe I am too idealistic, maybe a little naive, but I cannot see Google excited by Robert's idea of speculating on the value of bandwidth rights.

Trying to build a world of infinite storage, bandwidth, and CPU power, that is Googly. That infrastructure, once built, would be a tool that makes the impossible possible.

It entirely explains the massive data centers and bandwidth acquisitions. And it is entirely Googly.

6 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I thought it was not one of his better articles. It seemed to show that Bob still doesn't really understand how peering relationships work between large internet companies. I think he needs talk to some guys that actually deal with this stuff on a regular basis, or attend a few NANOG's.

Then why not be more open about what they are doing. After all for a company that believes in do no evil the way that they are going about aquiring all this fibre is raising more questions than are being answered.

I don't think there is such thing as "not Googly" any more. Remember the days when Google was focusing on search and search only? Remember the days when they were the anti-portal site? At this point everything is Googly.